Medieval gobbledygook.
Faith is implanted through Holy, Holy, Holy ritual.
Yet also by unholy ritual.
Neither Mammon nor the Church are peddling the great cycle, (ahem, ahem), they are therefore subject to evolutionary selection, yea even in the realm of faith.

The RC church hierarchy is trapped in a kind of closed loop. The Pope chooses the cardinals, and the cardinals choose the Pope. In any such system, everyone becomes of a like-minded rigid conservatism in the long run. The new ideas and attitudes that the Church so desperately needs to survive cannot penetrate. Meanwhile, the priests, monks, and nuns are dying off without replacement by younger people, and the teachings of the Church are increasingly ignored. The RC Church is committing a long, slow suicide.

Out of touch indeed - the Vatican (& Pope) instantly condemned the disturbance of a bishop's tomb by searching police but have been consistently slow and apparently reluctant in condemning the concealment of child abuse. Indeed the head of the church in Ireland is still in place (& unprosecuted) in spite of admitting an appalling offence of pressuring children to keep quiet about abuse.

There is something strangely twisted about the church's moral viewpoint, which rather invalidates its views on other moral issues.

so when has the vatican been in touch with the rank and file? When Pius XII supported hitler? or maybe the re-instatement of the bishop Richard Williamson, who openly endorses the anti-semitic tract Protocols of the Elders of Zion and believes the Holocaust never happened. There is absolutely nothing within the structure of the catholic church, the vatican or the person of the pope, cardinals or bishops that remotely resembles the Person of Christ, His teachings and the humility, poverty and service of His apostles. The catholic church is in itself its own problem because it has nothing in common with the Gosple it claims to preach. If you want a gospel explanation of what is going on in the church ... "for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap." ...

New agency with responsibility for evangelization in Europe. Wow. Who is going to do this evangelization? I was reading recently that here in France, the average age of the working priests is somewhere in their 60s and there were 30, thirty, new priests ordained last year in all of France...

One might even suggest that this is an old-fashioned Italian-style poisoned chalice, setting the guy up to fail, except the idea is too delusional for that to work.

Unless the Vatican can figure out how to manufacture priests, Catholics here are going to wake up one day and find there are none left.

Maybe if they let more +18 yr old women, help priests with their church's tasks instead of young kids, the child abuse cases by Belgian Catholic church would lower down.

Also its really funny how we let the people with the worst knowledge about sexual matters take important judgements about it and even say whats right or wrong to the others. (not very efficient allocation of resources if you ask me)

The catholic church has an impressive track record of backwardness, and it surprises me that people still believe that change can happen, specially on this pope's watch.
On the other hand, it is incumbent on countries to push for a more secular political agenda, thus substituting clear thinking and the triumph of Reason for dogma and superstition.
Look around, and you will see that religion is nowadays the single most important contributor to intolerance, which has led, in many cases, to dissent and war.

If you believe, as I believe catholics do, that life begins at conception then you have to think rape of the mother is no excuse for murdering the unborn child.

I don't agree myself that life begins that early so it seems a perfectly reasonable basis to seek an abortion but any catholic who thinks rape or incest is a reason to allow abortion is saying that taking a life is sometimes right